Coffee, Stat
by One Foot Forward
Summary: [AU] Clarke's a doctor-to-be and Bellamy's a cop and that's really all I have to say about that.


**AN: **because apparently whenever I try to write something, these two shits are all that come of it; oh well

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She's running on empty, and she doesn't mean in the figurative sense (although maybe she kind of does) but more in the _I-haven't-eaten-in-twenty-hours _sense, and it is unrealistic to believe that she might actually be able to sit down for lunch (breakfast?) at this point, sure, but she is a hear breadth away from turning her twelve years of highly specialized medical education on someone if she _doesn't get some damn caffeine_, like, stat. Which is slightly worrisome because she's trained in the art of saving lives not taking them, but honestly she's willing to compromise at this point.

(there should be some sort of special code for doctors when they need to skip the _longest ever_ coffee cart line, so that they don't snap and take out the nearest patient with a cup of java in their hand)

The sun is rising (again) and she knows that she looks as bad as she feels – bags under her eyes, any semblance of makeup smudged off her face (why she even tries to put any on is a bit of a mystery, even to her) – but things begin to look up when the barista catches a glimpse of Clarke's absolutely mutinous face and begins to rush through the next three orders. _Just_ as it looks like she might actually be able to grab that triple espresso she's been dreaming of, _and_ make it back to the ER without anyone the wiser, her god damned pager begins beeping.

And now, she isn't normally a violent person, truly, but she spends the next millisecond or so deciding whether or not throwing the thing at someone will make her feel better.

(no)

So with one last wistful (and slightly pissed-off) glance at the lady with the caffeine and the ticket to her peace, Clarke turns around and runs back to her post.

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The scene which greets her is chaos at best, but also a lot of blood and screaming, and it's a jinx, isn't it, to leave your post at the ER for a _microsecond_ on a god damn Sunday morning, when things were supposed to be peaceful.

She catches sight of one of her interns moving towards her and jostles her way through the crowd towards him, pulling the charts from his hands as soon as she gets close enough. "Murphy, fill me in."

He's a fair bit taller than Clarke, so when he cards a hand through his hair and points to one of the corner beds she has to strain to see. It isn't too difficult however, as the most noise is coming from that direction. "Those two idiots decided that the best way to spend their weekend was by digging around some abandoned ground mines." He explains. "The explosion from _that_ resulted in a collapse later down the tunnel line, which caused all of _this_."

He gestures to the other half of the room, where she vaguely makes out varying degrees of shrapnel and contusion injuries; the ER is flooded with personnel and medics and over-eager surgeons, and as such it's a congested mess – _her_ congested mess, rather.

She glances back down to the charts in her hands, the topmost of which is some kid named _Jasper_, suffering from shortness of breath and chest pains, and then back to Murphy. He's looking at her for instruction, for order through the noise, and she's an ER surgeon, or she's as close to one as possible, and she can _so_ do this. "Okay. Go get me beds and bloods and interns, and then page plastics and cardio. And find any available OR's, I want all electives cleared if possible."

He nods and moves away, but she stops him. "Wait. Are there more coming in?"

"Some of the casualties are police, they're still on their way over."

"Right. Then grab Jaha as well, I have a feeling we'll need the extra hands."

Murphy darts off then and she jogs towards the entrance, where the paramedics are bringing in a new patient. The man's face is grey but his jacket is almost red through the dark blue of his cop outfit, and she spares him a calculating glance before looking back to the one pulling him in.

"Who's this?"

The paramedic hands her a chart, says, "Miller, age twenty-six, with massive internal damage to the lower abdomen."

Clarke grips the papers in her hand a little more tightly, then grabs one of the surgeons rushing past her. It's a man named Austin – steady hands, good under pressure, talks a little bit too much for her liking – and she passes the chart off to him. "Send him to bay six."

Austin nods and pushes past her, and she turns back to the medic. "How many more are there?"

The lady is already making to leave, barely has time to say, "Four at least, maybe five," before she's running back out the front door.

An ambulance screeches to a halt outside the entrance way Clarke's standing in, and she files through the injuries in front of her and the attending's she knows are on shift as she runs outside. The chaos is as exhilarating as it is intimidating, and the thought of coffee is the last thing on her mind.

_Oh well, never a slow day at the office._

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Five hours later, two codes, and one collapsed lung, and everyone is either in an OR, piled into the ICU, or elsewhere resting. The two boys – Jasper and Monty – had apparently been tracking down yet another friend, the one who had run off into the mines in the first place for some borderline-suicidal adrenaline junkies' joy ride. When the explosion had gone off they'd tried to find him, only to get caught in the collapse themselves.

Thankfully the worst of the damage stops there, and the rest of the injuries are superficial at best. Well, except for the first police officer, the one who had made the stupidly heroic decision to try and track down the third member of the idiotic brigade, one who was evidently just _fine_, having have caused the chaos but not getting stuck in it. Besides that and Jasper, the one with breathing difficulties that had quickly turned into a collapsed lung (and also, she admits to herself, one of the _coolest_ surgeries ever, still going on in OR 2), everyone else is off of the operating table.

_No deaths yet,_ she thinks, glancing up at the OR board, trying to catalogue which surgeon is in with which patient, _it'd be nice to keep it that way_.

"Hey there!" A voice hollers, somewhere to her right, and her eyes stutter close. _Please don't be me, please don't be me_, she doesn't look, it's been a really long shift and she just wants to go to the observation deck and finish out her work in peace, and –

"Doc!"

(_Of course it's me_). She turns around, charts in hand (hey, someone has to finish with the paperwork, and it's her shift), only to be greeted by the very _up-front-and-personal_ face of some strange man (looming, angry, kind of cute) and the several nurses who trail after him.

She slaps on a smile, takes in the police uniform and the twitchy hands, and tries to remain optimistic.

"Yes?"

"You Dr. Griffin?"

"I am…" she switches her gaze to the personnel behind him who have yet to leave, probably due to the fact that non-medical staff _aren't meant to come back here_, and waves them off, "and you are?"

"Officer Blake." When she glances back to him he's frowning, eyes narrowed and chin set and _seriously_ why can't she catch a break today. "I was told you dealt with one of my men this morning."

It isn't a question. She leans back on her heels. "Actually, sir, you'll have to have this conversation with the nurse at the front desk. She'll direct you where you need to go."

"What I_ need_ is for you to tell me where my officer is."

She stares at him for a moment, counts down from ten. "There is protocol in place for a reason. Now, if you need me to escort you – "

"I don't need an _escort_ – "

"Good."

"_Good_?" He's seething, hands now balled into fists at his sides (Clarke notes this all with disapproval, but it isn't as calm as she'd like it because _thirty fucking hours of work_). "No, not good. You worked on his case, you can tell me where he his."

"What I can do is tell you to go through the proper channels and – "

"Listen, you can just tell me where he is _now_." His voice is climbing, loud and clear and definitely causing a scene.

And this is also the unfortunate moment that Clarke decides she doesn't care. She's never responded well to being yelled at – a bit of a leftover behavioural mechanism due to having a mother who is the Greatest Surgeon Ever and also kind of a huge bitch most days – and _definitely_ not at her place of work.

"Hey," she leans in towards him, her voice a hiss, "now you listen. You cannot just come barging in here, in a restricted area I might add, and demand to know confidential information. What you _can_ do is calm down – "

"Calm down?!" The cop laughs, trailing a hand roughly through his hair, which already a mess. "_Calm down_? I can't find my officer, can't find a fucking doctor in this whole fucking hospital who will give me a straight answer, and you want me to just calm down?!"

"Well maybe if you stopped _shouting_ at one of them long enough to _verify your identity_, we could actually get somewhere."

"I'm only shouting because no one will talk to me!"

"_I am talking to you_!"

(she really doesn't normally yell at patients, but again: thirty-two hours)

(and he isn't even a patient so like, just fucking sue her, she doesn't care)

Her shout is loud and a little shrill but it also leaves silence in its wake, no one around them (only nurses and doctors thank _god_) doing anything other than staring, and the jerk-face asshole of a cop is only looking at her with wide eyes and a lip that trembles just enough. So she glances around and decides that now is a _great_ time to move this conversation elsewhere, anywhere really, so she puts her hand on his back and leads him to where the public zones are located.

He resists at first, but it's more of a token resistance, because he's an officer and she's just a doctor (to be, technically). He glares a little, with hands still shaking and a uniform coated in grime, probably had rushed here straight from the crash site, and eventually lets himself be pushed.

"Where are we going?"

She looks down to his shoes next to hers, his dusted grey and hers with flecks of blood on them, and says, "I need coffee. And you need answers."

"_What,_ coffee – no, just tell me now."

Clarke grumbles, and when he stops (defiant and definitely still a Big Jerk) she continues walking. "I _can't_, not without the nurse at the front desk confirming that you know the patient. You would know that if you hadn't come barging in."

He mumbles something behind her but she still hasn't slowed down, because it's been more than a day since she last slept and now she knows she needs to eat, or go to bed, or _shower_ at least, but in the absence of all of that she is going to get a god damned giant ass cup of joe and she was not going to let some nitwit, hot-tempered officer of the law –

"Okay." He says, and he must have jogged to catch up with her but his strides are longer than hers anyway so maybe not. "Where do we do that?"

She side eyes him. "The front desk." And when he still stares at her (impressive a task, since she's almost running now she's walking so fast) she continues, "Where all those nurses you scared off were."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

They lapse into silence for a moment, him likely deciding if he was mad or not (shock tends to do that to you, a lot of big events stuffed into a very small amount of time, it warps your emotions, makes you trigger anger when you're feeling hurt, and Clarke has been on both ends of the disaster so she really doesn't fault him _that_ much) while she tries to figure out which coffee cart would have the smallest line up.

(it's nearly noon now, so the ones near the entrance of the hospital are a no-go; the ones near the psych ward are never open until two, which is _ridiculous_, but irrefutable, and since a lot of the doctors are having lunch around this time it means that the cafeteria would be no help…)

(when they round the next corner Clarke nearly takes out a medical tray and _god fucking damnit _she'll wait in the lobby line if it means caffeine)

By the time they actually make it to the front desk (Clarke abandons Officer Blake to a rather pissed off nurse, one of the ones who had chased him halfway across the hospital the first time, and heads off to a vending coffee machine) and then to a waiting room area, another half hour has passed. It isn't much, likely doesn't even mean either of the OR patients are out yet, but it is enough to piss Blake off again. When he finally _does_ sit down it is with a flush on his face and a muttered oath under his breath.

"This is a ridiculous system."

She shuffles through the chart in her hand, slowly leaning back into the big chair with a sigh. "It's the law, you know that."

She thinks she hears him say _dumb law_ under his breath, but doesn't comment.

"So now that I've jumped through all of your hoops, will you _finally_ tell me about my officer?" He glances over to her, his body far too large for the little chair he occupies.

"Officer Miller, right?" He nods. She flips to the appropriate page, just to be sure (not that she ever _isn't_, because she knows her patients, but she is a little loopy and she did sort of try and buy coffee from a water jug earlier, so you know, double-check your shit).

"He arrived in critical condition, with injuries to the lower abdomen," she skirts over the fact that his means crushed bones and injured organs, "and was sent to the OR almost immediately. He's in surgery right now to fix some of that damage."

A brief quiet falls over them, then, "That's all you can tell me?"

She raises her gaze from the paper and takes a large sip of her coffee. "For now."

She's staring right at him, and it's funny (although that could be the sleep deprivation talking) how easy it is to see the thoughts pass over his face; a crinkled nose, hunched shoulders, and finally another hand being pushed through his hair, which she guesses laid flat on his head at one point.

(she also notices the dusting of freckles on his nose and she hopes it's also the sleep deprivation talking when her first thought is _cute_)

But then she glances at his shirt, which is crumpled and kind of smells, if she's being honest, and he hasn't left the hospital in _five hours_, if what the nurses say holds any truth, which is usually does. And when his eyes drift past hers they're a little too wide, and _fuck it_, she is trained to be an ER doctor, she knows the look, it's her kryptonite really, was why she rarely actually left the hospital and just –

She slams back the dregs of her coffee (which is toxic and gross but totally wakes her up) and stands. He follows her movements with steady eyes and trembling legs and she smiles with her lips closed.

"I'll go check with the surgeons, see how he's doing." He blinks at her. "I'll come back with an update."

He lets out a breathless laugh. "You sure you don't have something more important to be doing?"

_Sleep_, she thinks, but she's made it this far so what's a little bit more? Besides, she's officially off her shift, so at least no one will be paging her.

She shakes her head. "No. Just this."

And when he smiles, his legs no longer jostling, she knows that at least she's done this right.

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(Miller makes a full recover, but has to be strapped to a recovery bed for at least two weeks, much to his chagrin, and apparently it isn't just an _Officer Blake_ thing to be extra annoying when not getting their way;

Also, Blake comes back the very next day, with a very large thermos of what is possibly the best coffee _ever_, and introduces himself as _Bellamy_, just Bellamy thanks and Clarke resists the urge to ask him where else he might have freckles)

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End file.
